ACCLAIMED FILMMAKER KOGONADA WILL WRITE AND DIRECT PARTICIPANT’S LIMITED SCRIPTED SERIES BASED ON THE LANDMARK VINCENT CHIN STORY

Series is Executive Produced by Two-Time Academy Award® Winner Chloé Zhao

LOS ANGELES – August 30, 2022 – Participant, the leading media company dedicated to entertainment that stands at the intersection of art and activism, announced today that Kogonada (After Yang, Columbus, Pachinko) and Christopher Radcliff (The Strange Ones) have joined the creative team of its upcoming limited scripted series inspired by the Vincent Chin story. Kogonada and Radcliff will write the series, and Kogonada will direct.

As previously announced, Academy Award® winner Chloé Zhao is executive producing with Helen Zia, Vicangelo Bulluck, Paula Madison and Donald Young, as well as Participant’s Jeff Skoll and Miura Kite.

“Kogonada’s deeply probing vision into the heart of Vincent’s story and the birth of a movement in a way that both compels and stands the test of time makes him the perfect filmmaker to capture this landmark history,” said Zia, who is executor of the Chin Estate and was a founder and spokesperson for the Justice for Vincent Chin campaign.

“We seek to consistently work with the most vital artists working today,” said Participant CEO David Linde. “We are incredibly pleased to be working with visionary filmmakers Kogonada and Chloé Zhao, who together will bring their incredibly insightful artistic lenses to this vital story, so relevant to our contemporary world.”

Through an exclusive agreement with the Chin Estate and Zia, the Participant-produced series is the only authorized telling of the landmark civil rights case about the 1982 murder of Chinese American Vincent Chin.

Amidst the severe recession and anti-Asian hate following the collapse of the auto industry in the 1980s, the murder of Vincent Chin in Detroit and the lenient sentences of probation and minimal fines for his two white killers sparked widespread outrage in America and thrust Asian American communities into the limelight and the nation’s raging debates on race. With exclusive access to this pivotal moment in American history, the series will reveal the definitive account of a civil rights movement that matters today more than ever, when a community discovered its voice.

Kogonada recently executive produced and directed the pilot and several episodes of Pachinko, which was written and executive produced by Soo Hugh (The Terror) and stars Lee Min Ho, Minha Kim, Soji Arai, and Academy Award winner Youn Yuh-jung, to name a few. The series premiered on Apple TV+ on March 25th, 2022. Prior to that, Kogonada wrote and directed After Yang, which was set up at A24 with Cinereach producing. It premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival and had its North American premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize. The film stars Colin Farrell and Jodie Turner-Smith. Kogonada wrote and directed the feature Columbus starring John Cho and Haley Lu Richardson, which premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and was released by the Sundance Institute to great critical acclaim.

Radcliff is an award-winning Chinese American filmmaker originally from western Pennsylvania. His work has screened worldwide, including at festivals such as Sundance, SXSW, and IFF Rotterdam, and his debut feature film The Strange Ones was released theatrically in 2018. Most recently, he worked as a writer/producer on HBO’s forthcoming limited series A Time For Mercy.

Participant’s growing television slate includes such acclaimed series as award-winning filmmaker Rachel Dretzin’s Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey (Netflix); America to Me, the 10-part docuseries from award-winning filmmaker Steve James (Starz), as well as his follow-up series City So Real on National Geographic; sci-fi drama series Noughts + Crosses (BBC and Peacock); and Ava DuVernay’s Emmy®-winning When They See Us (Netflix). Coming up is the original series Interior Chinatown, based on Charles Yu’s National Book Award-winning book, in development at Hulu.

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About Participant
Founded by Chairman Jeff Skoll and under the leadership of CEO David Linde, Participant (www.participant.com) combines the power of a good story well told with real world impact and awareness around today’s most vital issues. Through its worldwide network of traditional and digital distribution, aligned with partnerships with key non-profit and NGO organizations, Participant speaks directly to the rise of today’s “conscious consumer,” representing the well over 2 billion consumers compelled to make meaningful content a priority focus. As an industry content leader, Participant annually produces up to six narrative feature films, six documentary films, three episodic television series, and more than 20 hours of digital short form programming. Participant’s more than 100 films have collectively earned 85 Academy Award® nominations and 21 wins, including Best Picture for Spotlight and Green Book; Best Documentary Feature for An Inconvenient Truth, CITIZENFOUR, The Cove and American Factory; and Best Foreign Language Film for Roma and A Fantastic Woman. Participant also has earned 44 EMMY® Award nominations and 11 wins, including two wins for the groundbreaking When They See Us. Follow Participant on Twitter (@Participant) and on Facebook and Instagram.